[mythtv-users] Commercial skipping

[Brian Wood]

On Jun 25, 2006, at 3:04 PM, mooshie wrote:

> On Sun, 2006-06-25 at 16:39 -0400, Steven Adeff wrote:
>> On 6/25/06, mooshie <nsmith5 at umbc.edu> wrote:
>>> For commercial skipping, does the "all" option mean that _every_
>>> condition "blank screen, logo, scene change, etc" must be met, or  
>>> just
>>> one of those conditions? The first would mean that "all" is very
>>> restrictive, while the latter would mean "all" is very liberal..  
>>> if I
>>> had a guess I would guess that it's the latter
>>
>> It means all methods are used to calculate the most likely commercial
>> start/stop point. Each method is used in scanning and the positions
>> each method finds are given points according to the likelyhood of  
>> that
>> position being a commercial cut point, the positions with the most
>> points are then flagged.
>
> Cool answer, thanks. If commercial obfuscation is used to trick DVR
> programs, is that usually more on the local content provider side, or
> the channel side, or both? I'm trying to twiddle down the reasons why
> recording Deadliest Catch on the Discovery channel isn't flagging
> commercials, and if it's a settings issue, or if the Discovery channel
> is just good at confusing DVR programs.. I know myth isn't perfect at
> commercial removing.

I sometimes watch that program and Myth seems to do as good a job  
detecting commercials as with any other show, certainly better than 90%.

There are network commercials (inserted by the Discovery Channel  
itself) and local spots, inserted by your local cable company or  
satellite carrier, if on cable these are usually for local businesses.

Is it one particular type that you are having trouble detecting ?? If  
it's the network spots I'd think we would all be having the problem,  
but the locally-inserted commercials are usually the easiest to detect.

BTW - The Big Networks are going crazy about that show. It is  
consistently showing up in the top 10, and is produced by a "cable  
network" (shudder) with a relatively low budget compared to the Major  
networks.

So the Big Networks are trying to figure out what's going on, which  
is easy, somebody had something that is very rare with the Big  
Networks: a good program idea.